Overall South Africa's Indian and white population are declining, but the whites may become extinct by 2061, a new study has predicted.
The study by South African Institute of Race Relations has revealed that the country's white population is declining by about 0.3 per cent every five years, News24.com quoted a city press report as saying.
This decline in white population has been attributed by the institute to lowered fertility rates affecting the middle class across all population groups, as well to continued white emigration.
City Press extrapolated the figures and discovered that, if the current decline trends persisted, white South Africans would be extinct by the year 2161, while the Indian population would decline marginally.
Figures contained in the institute's yearly South Africa Survey showed that South Africa's white and Indian population were declining, while the country's coloured and black African population groups were growing.
The study predicted that by 2025, the black African population would have grown by about five million from the current level of 40 million.
Over the same period the white population would have declined by 350,000 to a level of just more than four million.
Frans Cronje, the deputy chief executive of the institute, said there was a ‘lot of controversy’ around the figures, because South Africa's population statistics may be off by as much as 10 million.
He said the country's white population was declining because of lowered fertility rates among women that was a ‘symptom of the middle class’.